GOP senators block Ted Cruz move to hold up Loretta Lynch vote  —  Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's strategy of blocking a vote on President Barack Obama's attorney general nominee until the White House relents on immigration executive actions ran into a brick wall Wednesday: his own GOP colleagues.

The Cotton Letter Was Not Sent Anywhere, Especially Not to Iran  —  Tom Cotton on Face the Nation, March 15, 2015 (CBS)  —  Before U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and 46 of his GOP colleagues are frog-marched to the gallows and hanged for treason, one vital point of confusion must be cleared up.

Sources: HHS' Obamacare Contingency Plan Is To Ask States To Contract Exchange Work To The Feds  —  Something odd has been happening with the Supreme Court battle over the legality of subsidies for Obamacare's federally-organized health insurance exchange.  The Obama administration has been claiming …

Netanyahu: If I'm elected, there will be no Palestinian state  —  In a definitive disavowal of his Bar-Ilan two-state speech, prime minister makes last-minute attempt to draw voters from Bennett's Habayit Hayeudi.  —  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhau said Monday that if he were to be reelected …

Furniture Company: Aaron Schock Likely Spent $5,000 On A Replica Of President Obama's Podium  —  The Illinois Republican has a podium that appears to be “The Presidential.”  —  Schock standing behind his custom podium back in his home district of Peoria, Illinois in 2013.

Is It Time for the Jews to Leave Europe?  —  For half a century, memories of the Holocaust inoculated the Continent against overt anti-Semitism.  That period has ended—the recent fatal attacks in Paris and Copenhagen are merely the latest in a mounting tide.

A Post-Netanyahu Republican Foreign Policy  —  As Israelis prepare to go to the polls tomorrow, it's dawning on a lot of American observers that a defeat for Benjamin Yetanyahu's government—not exactly “likely,” but certainly a decent possibility—could represent a turning point in American as well as Israeli politics.

Al Gore should run for president  —  Democrats need a debate about where their party goes next.  Obamacare's passage marked the rough completion of the social safety net that liberals began constructing during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency.  The end of the Iraq War drained Democrats of their foreign policy fervor.

Marco Rubio's house of horrors  —  A Tallahassee home co-owned by a scandal-plagued ex-congressman is the locus of questions about the senator's finances and judgment.  —  TALLAHASSEE — The brick-fronted tract house with a satellite dish and a yellow fire hydrant in front looks …

WWW.SLTRIB.COM  —  I've learned the real reason why Mitt Romney chose not to run for president for a third time in 2016.  —  He's taking up boxing.  —  In fact, Romney is slated to fight former heavyweight boxing champion Evander Holyfield in the marquis event during a several-bout evening …

Santorum On Putting Bibles In Public Schools: ‘Yes We Can!  Yes We Can!’  —  Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) issued a passionate call for Bibles in public schools on Saturday during an appearance at a convention of social conservatives in Orlando, Florida.

Ikea Stamps Out Hide-and-Seek Games in Furniture Stores … (Bloomberg) — Ikea has stopped plans by thousands of people to play hide-and-seek in its maze-like stores in the Netherlands.  —  After a spirited round of the children's game attracted hundreds of people to a Belgian Ikea outlet last summer …

What Jeb Bush is like in person  —  HUDSON, N.H.—Being with former Florida governor Jeb Bush for his first trips to Iowa and New Hampshire last weekend and this one, I found his demeanor to be completely different from those of the dozens of other candidates I have covered in these two states as they tested the presidential waters.

The U.K. vs. the U.S. minimum-wage debate: What can we learn?  —  In a recent lecture at the London School of Economics, Prof. Alan Manning, a British economist who has done extensive research on the impact of the national minimum wage in the United Kingdom, said something that caught my ear.

Mother abducts Dutch children to ISIL-held Syrian city  —  32-year-old woman, a Chechnyian native, took her children, aged 7 and 8, to Raqqa, Dutch prosecutors confirm  —  Two Dutch children have been abducted by their mother and taken to the ISIL-held city of Raqqa in Syria, Dutch prosecutors confirmed Monday.

A Police Gadget Tracks Phones?  Shhh!  It's Secret  —  A powerful new surveillance tool being adopted by police departments across the country comes with an unusual requirement: To buy it, law enforcement officials must sign a nondisclosure agreement preventing them from saying almost anything about the technology.

Huckabee Pursues Unconventional Ways to Fund a Campaign  —  In a wood-paneled study lined with books and framed family photos, the prospective presidential candidate looks into the camera.  “I'm Mike Huckabee,” he says with all the folksy charm that propelled a career as a preacher, politician and broadcaster.

‘Right to Work’ Law  —  Gov. Scott Walker may think that his so-called right-to-work law will give employers “another compelling reason to consider expanding or moving their business to Wisconsin” ("Unions Suffer Latest Defeat in the Midwest," front page, March 10).